


Compare and Contrast

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-14
Updated: 2006-06-14
Packaged: 2018-09-03 20:30:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8729026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: Slight spoilers for "Scarecrow." Dean's skin is damp, and he smells like shampoo and clean water. Steam curls out of the bathroom doorway. When Sam presses his lips to Dean's throat he tastes cheap motel soap and skin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).

Compare and Contrast

  
**Title** \- Compare and Contrast  
**Rating** \- NC17  
**Pairing** \- Sam/Dean  
**Size** \- 2600 words  
**Spoilers** \- through most episodes. one mention of events in Scarecrow. I think that's it.  
  
  
  
  
  
_**Compare and Contrast**_  
  
  
Dean's skin is damp, and he smells like shampoo and clean water. Steam curls out of the bathroom doorway. When Sam presses his lips to Dean's throat he tastes cheap motel soap and skin.   
  
"Jesus, Sammy-" Dean gasps.   
  
Sam shoves him hard against the wall. Dean's ring pings against the plaster when Sam slaps his arm back. He can feel Dean's pulse under the thin skin of his wrists. He kisses the hollow of Dean's throat and says, "Shut up, Dean," as he drops to his knees.  
  
*  
  
Dean counts cards and hustles pool and commits credit card fraud. There's not a lock he can't pick, no cuffs that can hold him.   
  
The ends always justify the means with Dean, and Sam remembers spending his life growing up not being able to understand that.   
  
If Dean needed a place to sleep, he'd smile and flirt with the sheriff's daughter, the innkeeper's sister, whoever, until he had a place to stay. If he needed money, he'd find something to scam for it. Dean would bribe, or cheat, or bend the rules, as long as at the end of the day whatever he did had helped someone else.   
  
"I don't understand you," Sam used to tell him. Right was right and wrong wasn't, no matter who or why or what it was for.   
  
Dean would shrug, bare his teeth in a smile, and answer "You don't have to."   
  
*  
  
The diner is loud and busy. Sam can hear the clatter of ceramic plates and the tinkle of silverware. He leans back in his seat to stretch his legs out. His boots bang into Dean's, but neither of them move their feet.   
  
"Where we headed today?" Dean asks. Sam shrugs and flips open the paper.   
  
When the waitress comes over to drop off their coffee, Sam looks up only long enough to nod a quick thank you. He's skimming the headlines, looking to see if anything jumps out at him. It takes a minute for him to realize Dean didn't pass him the milk yet and that the waitress is still there.   
  
Dean's smiling one of his loose, easy grins. His arm is stretched back over the back of the booth and whatever he just said has the waitress laughing. Her voice is high and bright over the din in the restaurant. A busboy comes over to deliver their water glasses and a glare at the waitress. She blushes and promises to be back in a minute with their food.   
  
"What was that all about?" Sam asks. He rips open three sugar packets and dumps them in his coffee. "Gimme the milk."  
  
Dean slides the tiny silver pot across the table and Sam lightens his coffee.   
  
"What was what all about?" Dean asks.  
  
"That." Sam jerks his head toward the counter where their waitress is tapping her order pad against her thigh. She sees them looking in her direction and smiles. Dean smiles back and waves his hand in the air.   
  
" _That,_ " Sam says again, reaching out to smack Dean on the side of the head. "Do you have to hit on-" Dean shushes him so Sam lowers his voice and finishes " _every_ girl you meet?"  
  
"Not every girl--" Dean starts to say, but just then she comes back with two steaming plates of food.  
  
"Here you go, guys."   
  
She gives Sam his pancakes and puts the biggest cheeseburger platter Sam has ever seen in front of Dean. There's probably three times the normal amount of fries on his plate, two pickles, and three small tubs of mustard on the side. "I doubled up the order on the fries but then took it off your check," she tells Dean with a wink. "And oh, hang on a sec." She digs around in her apron. Sam barely manages to keep from rolling his eyes when she slides a few small tubs of apple jelly next to Dean's plate. "For you to take when you go," she says conspiratorially.   
  
Dean picks them up and puts them in his jacket pocket. "That's perfect, darlin'. Thank you for checking."  
  
She taps her pad on their table and winks again before she walks away. Dean's still smiling and Sam is completely irritated. Dean pulls the lettuce and tomato off his plate. He starts dumping ketchup in the space they left and all over the pile of fries. "What?" he asks, when he finishes with the ketchup and sees Sam is still glaring at him.   
  
"Nothing," Sam grunts. "Jesus. Flirting for apple jelly. This has to be a new low even for you," he adds and he can hear Dean snicker.   
  
"Don't knock it 'till you've tried it, little brother."  
  
Sam huffs and stabs his pancakes. A blueberry shoots out from the middle of the stack and rolls off his plate. Dean grabs it before it hits the edge of the table, grins, and pops it into his mouth.  
  
*  
  
The sheets are soft and twisted under their bodies. Sam pulls his knee up to the side. He curls his fingers into the corner of the mattress and feels his thumb go through the threadbare fabric. The tear and rip echoes in the quiet of the room.  
  
He bears down and back against Dean. Sam grits his teeth and pushes, forcing Dean in deeper, feeling the burn and stretch every time he moves.   
  
"Yeah," Sam pants. He pushes up. Drops his head down and braces himself on his hands.   
  
Dean's chest is hot against his back. There's nothing between them except sweat and skin, nothing except Dean's fingers bruising Sam's hips, his mouth hot and wet against the back of Sam's neck. His breath ruffles Sam's hair. Sam can hear him breathing; can feel his tongue and teeth and mouth. Dean kisses the side of Sam's throat and then bites down on his skin.   
  
Dean shifts and twists and moves. Sam can feel it - feel him. He pushes back, reaches down to take himself in his hand, but Dean is there pushing at his hand, batting him away.   
  
"I got it," he rasps into Sam's ear, and then it's his hand, his fingers. It's tight and rough and just a little too hard, a little too much. "That okay?"   
  
And it's harder than Sam should want or need but he thinks that maybe this is what they've earned. "Yeah," he says, and "Do it," and "Harder." Dean breathes out Sam's name and fucks him until they're both shaking and spent and coming on the sheets.   
  
*  
  
Sam was ten when he learned how to hot-wire a car. He didn't want to learn; he thought it was stupid and wrong and Dean already knew how to do it so why did he have to learn too?   
  
"No, Sammy, watch what I'm doing."   
  
Dad's voice was soft; his hands moved quick and sure. He was holding the wires between his thick fingers but stopped to make sure Sam was paying attention.   
  
Sam huffed. "This is dumb. I don't know why I wouldn't just _have_ a car if I needed one."  
  
"You cant always trust that, Sam," Dean called from the porch. They were renting a small house just outside of Nashville. Sam glanced over and saw Dean sitting on the steps, his legs spread wide, elbows resting on his knees. "Sometimes you might not and need a ride."  
  
The sun was beating down on Sam's neck. He felt sweat trickle under his collar and down his back. "Then I'll walk," he said, his teeth clenched tightly together. "This is _stupid._ "  
  
Dad touched the wires again and the engine shuddered to life. "Did you watch, Sammy?" he asked quietly.   
  
Sam looked at his dad's hands. Saw how he did it and filed it away. A bird squawked overhead and Sam muttered "Maybe" as he looked away.  
  
*  
  
When Sam couldn't reach Dean that day on the phone, he left Meg in the bus station and walked out the door without a clue of what he was going to do. He flipped a coin and walked south a mile down the road.   
  
A '95 Olds caught his eye in the parking lot of a crowded office building. It was dark blue with rust around the wheel wells. Sam hot-wired it right there in broad daylight.   
  
It took Sam three tries to get it to start. Three tries and he worried for a minute that he'd forgotten something or he was out of practice. Three tries and then the engine choked and sputtered to life. Sam felt his face break out in a wide grin.   
  
When Sam showed up, Dean asked him "How'd you get here?" and Sam told him "I stole a car." In his head he could hear Dean say _See, Sammy? Sometimes you might just need a ride._ Sam told the voice _Not always, but sometimes, yeah._  
  
*  
  
They dig up graves and steal holy water from churches. They impersonate priests and cops and forest rangers. If Sam tried right now to make a list of all the names he's answered to in his life he probably couldn't remember them all.   
  
Dean remembers them, and sometimes when Sam goes to say a name Dean corrects him. "No, dude. We were Plant and Page last week. I'm thinking more Hall and Oates now. Something a little more pop. A little more light FM."   
  
Sam rolls his eyes. "It doesn't matter, Dean. No one listens to that crap anymore anyway." Dean glares and tells him to shut up and then plays side one of Zeppelin IV for the next three days straight.   
  
Sam's whole life has been spent answering to someone else's name. When he started classes at Stanford, it actually took him a while to realize that when someone said Sam Winchester, they were talking to him.   
  
Even stranger was the next day, when they said it again, they were _still_ talking to him.   
  
He hated feeling like the typical college freshman trying to come to terms with who they were and what they wanted out of life. He hated feeling so lost and adrift. By the time he was eighteen Sam had hunted ghosts and demons; he'd tracked werewolves and battled shapeshifters. Sam wasn't some college cliché. He would look around him in class sometimes and think: I could tell you people stories that would keep you awake for weeks.   
  
But that wasn't him anymore, and he had to get used to that. College was his idea, after all. It was what _he_ wanted. At Stanford he was Sam Winchester and _just_ Sam Winchester.   
  
It was three weeks into his first semester when he realized that _Sam Winchester_ was just as fake a name as they'd all been. Maybe even more.  
  
*  
  
Sam thinks back, tries to remember all the times between him and Dean, but they all twist together in his brain like a map covered with intersecting roads that all lead to the same place. Sam doesn't remember a time when Dean wasn't there. He just always was.  
  
He remembers Dean's voice in his ear when he was five and scared of the dark. How strong his were hands against Sam's back when he was nine and shaking because of the thing in the closet. Sam can close his eyes and see Dean sleeping with him in the back of the car when Sam was ten, sharing a cheap motel bed with him when he was eleven.  
  
When Sam was fifteen he watched Dean with careful eyes, and when he was sixteen Dean started watching back.   
  
Sam was seventeen and Dean's mouth was his focus, along with his hands and fingers and teeth and tongue.   
  
The first time Dean kissed him Sam's head was throbbing from a deep cut over his eyebrow he got while running through the woods after a wolverine. Dean touched the washcloth against his skin and Sam flinched and jerked his head to the side.   
  
"Hold still," Dean told him, his voice serious. "You keep moving and I'll never be done."  
  
Sam kept still while Dean cleaned his face then bandaged it up. Dean sat back on his heels, just watching him, and when Sam expected a lecture about running off on his own when they were in the woods and the dangers of splitting up, Dean surprised him by leaning over and kissing him lightly.   
  
Dean's mouth was softer than Sam had imagined. He kissed Sam slowly, sweetly. He wasn't trying to overpower Sam or be in charge. Dean kissed him just long enough for Sam to know it wasn't an accident, then he pulled back blinking slowly.   
  
"That okay?" Dean asked quietly.   
  
All Sam could do was nod.  
  
That night they lay curled together in bed, and Sam learned the only things left that he didn't know about his brother. What the skin on the neck of his neck tasted like; sweat and salt and something spicy like cinammon. How his hands felt, strong and possessive, against Sam's bare back, down his sides, over his belly. He kissed Dean's chest, the inside of his elbow, the back of his knee.   
  
Sam learned how Dean looked and sounded when he came, and when they were done he lay against his brother's chest and listened to his breath even out in the quiet of the room.   
  
"What the hell was that?" Sam finally asked, but even as he did he knew the answer.   
  
He felt Dean's lips against his temple. "That's us," Dean answered.  
  
*  
  
When Sam fucks Dean, he likes to fuck him on his back. He wants to see Dean's face when he slides into him. Wants to watch his fingers twist and flex on the sheets. He wants to see Dean's teeth set in his lip, the skin underneath go blood red then white.   
  
Sam wants to watch Dean's mouth as he says Sam's name. When he hears the way Dean's voice breaks and catches, he wants to see what that does to Dean, what he looks like.   
  
Sam's twenty-two now and for all the years he missed - all the time he wasn't around - he wants to make up like this. Just like they are now. Here. Like this.  
  
The TV is on playing the same sports clip in a loop. Sam hears about three-pointers and foul lines and penalties as he dips his head and kisses Dean's shoulder. He holds Dean's wrists down and kisses across his throat, his chest, his eyes and cheek and mouth. Sam's hard, he wants, and when he can't wait any more he pushes against Dean slowly. Dean tosses his head on the pillow and bites out Sam's name.   
  
They're done too quick, too fast, and Sam still needs. His heart is pounding, his skin feels thin and itchy. He slides closer when Dean rolls to his side and lays his hand on Sam's hip. The sheets are damp with sweat and twisted around his legs   
  
"Sam," Dean says, his voice low. Sam watches him in the half-darkness of the room and touches his fingers to Dean's chest. He can feel the strong beat of his heart, the muscles sliding under his skin. "I never understood. All the problems you always had with everything." He takes a deep breath and Sam blinks. "How are you able to explain this?"   
  
Sam rolls Dean to his back and runs his hands over the broad chest. He watches his hands move across Dean's skin - steady and sure, like he's been about nothing else in his life. His cock drags across Dean's hip, wet at the tip and heavy with wanting. Dean tosses his head back and hisses.   
  
Sam leans in, and touches his mouth to his brother's throat. "I don't have to," he whispers.  
  
  
-end-


End file.
